[snowman81]

I have a computer lab of 30 Dell's with XP SP2 at a school. They are members of a domain controlled by a 2003 server. Last year one by one these machines began to hang on login a few each day.
When any login ( domain or local) tried to login the PC would hang and never display the desktop. The machine was also not viewable when browsing the domain. It did respond to an IP ping. Booting into safemode would allow login as local admin, but a login using safe mode with networking exibited the same problems. We finally had to re-install all of the PC's because we ran out of time to diagnose the problem. This year the problem has re-occured on one PC. I thought about leaving the domain and re-joining it but I am not able to login to access the network.

I recently tried disabling the firewall service. This did not help.

Any Ideas what to look for?

[Advertisements]

corrupt HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon key?

Is this the same machine? Did it always exhibit this problem? New build or old build? Manual build or image?

[gerryf]

corrupt HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon key?

Is this the same machine? Did it always exhibit this problem? New build or old build? Manual build or image?

[snowman81]

All 30 of these machines were built from the same Image. The image was taken from an original install that came from DELL. DeployCenter was used to make the image and deploy it.
All of these machines exibit the same problem. They appear to work fine for months. Then one day they cannot contact the domain controlle r and begin to hang on login.
This machine was one that failed last year was re-installed and is now again failing.

I do have a fairly restrictive GPO in place and a mandatory profile that is loaded from the server if this is a concern.

[Guse]

When you get into the system through Safe Mode, can you check out the Event Viewer?

Specifically, check out the System and Application logs. Look for the red X's that means error. Also, do you have any GPOs that enable auditing?

[snowman81]

Negative on the auditing. I will check the event logs and get back.